Between the weather and the play on the field, last year’s Alabama game was about as miserable an experience as I’ve ever sat through. Reggie Ragland explains (h/t) it was a pretty good time for Kirby Smart, though.
As we go through more plays, it’s apparent that Georgia could not move the ball. Exacerbating matters, it was a wet day in Athens. “It’s always great take it to fans,” Ragland says. “Especially playing at Georgia—[then-defensive coordinator Kirby] Smart’s alma mater. It’s always good to get the win for Coach Smart, and now he’s the head coach over there.”
Pounding the Bulldogs between the hedges probably helped open the job that Smart took.
“It helps out a lot,” Ragland says.
I suspect Florida helped more, but, yeah, I get his point.
Get The Picture 
It was kind of one of those days that we never got on the right side of, and Richt seemed to always be on the right side of those in the early days (first 5-6 years). That ’03 UT game was a great example. They were going in to take the lead before the half and we get a 90 yard fumble return as the clock hits zero to go up 13 instead of being down 1. Game over.
The conditions made it impossible to come back against Bama. There was no way you could throw the ball or do much of anything with consistency. the blocked punt was the dagger. And we seemed to find ourselves on the wrong side of snowballs too much in the last 5-6 years.
Here’s to being on the right side of those in the years to come!
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I know people here aren’t big fans of Finebaum (myself included), but I have to give him credit in predicting the outcome of the game. Last summer, he said on several occasions that UGA would beat Bama in the fall. However, after doing an interview with CMR the day before the game (the one which CMR told the story of his dad finding a $20 bill), immediately afterwards he predicted that he’d changed his mind, in which now he was predicting a blowout for Bama.
When asked later what caused him to change his mind, he said the vibes he got from CMR weren’t good and the overall mood around campus was ominous at best. He said he could just ‘feel’ a blowout was coming UGA’s way.
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You didn’t have to be Kreskin for that prediction. Any Joe Blow that knew the weather conditions and who had the bigger OL/DL could have predicted that. The team with the bigger road-graders wins a game like that much more than not, and they had them in spades.
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Paul also predicted that saban would mastermind a plan to stop Johnny football in their second match up. What was it 14-0 A&M with about 7 to play in the 1st quarter? Manziel went 28 of 39 for 464 and 5 tds. I can’t imagine what he’d have done without that masterful defensive game plan. Paul doesn’t know football. He’s knows how to manipulate football fans and he knows how to be the center of their attention. He’s monetized football fanaticism, but he doesn’t know jack about the game.
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I just hope Kirby remembers why we couldn’t move the ball and he doesn’t think he has some magic QB elixir he can apply to make that issue just go away. MM scorched Kirby’s corner on the first play, then came the pass: short and outside. From that point on Lambert was done as a QB and he’s shown no signs of becoming a legitimate sec QB since. He occasionally makes a nice pass and he occasionally reacts well to a blitz, but those good moments are too far in between. I understand why it’s necessary not to put too heavy a load on Eason and why he needs to earn the position, but please, pretty please with sugar on top, play #10. I could live with #12 too.
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I think if Chubb was 100%, then Eason would start day one.
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MM was open on that first play, but not by as much as the revisionist history has it. It would have been a huge gain, but it’s not a slam dunk he scores.
Like Senator, I think Florida was the last straw, but the Bama game was a particularly bad look for Richt. Not only did he not exorcise the 2008 demons, but every single area in which people had been critical of him (OL recruiting, special teams disasters, attention to detail with Bama having people assigned to keep cleats clean, etc.), were masterfully exploited by Saban and Kirby. It was the equivalent of watching a student crumble in front of the whole class while everyone in the room knows he’s not prepared.
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After the interception for TD, i was walking up the aisle. This guy is screaming at me “where are you going?? we are still in this” Sadly, I’d seen it too many times before. What a wet miserable day………..
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Wait — I thought the Bama players liked and appreciated Pruitt’s new leadership more than Smart’s old leadership and coaching style? Shouldn’t they retrospectively be more sensitive to Pruitt’s D being dominated more than Smart’s achievements that day?
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For everything Richt had done to show we could stand toe to toe, blow for blow with Bama in 2012, he and the team pi$$ed it away on that rainy afternoon.
When we got Henry’s fumble on Bama’s 2nd(?) possession and didn’t move, I knew we were in trouble because that took the wind out of the crowd’s sails. The offense never really got untracked the rest of the season after that possession. A lot of it was due to the QB position, but I’m convinced whatever Rob Sale sold to Pruitt, Richt & Schottenheimer was the ultimate snake oil.
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And, yes, I know we scored 31 the next week against Tennessee (14 of that was due to the defense and special teams not the offense).
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I blame Jeremy for Rob Sale. Otoh, If you ever believe a salesman named Rob Sale, you need to resume the position
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Well played, DiF, well played
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It was an old fashioned a$$ whippin by a bigger, stronger, more talented, better prepared team. This was not the occasional face plant. October 2015 was a fricken disaster, with the slight exception of mizzou.
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Read the article. Dang. They seemed to know every play we were going to run. We never had a chance. I also said after the finebaum interview of richt that we were going to get blown out. And I had been predicting a win for a long time.
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Kirby may have gotten the job because of his defense’s performance against us, but the last two years in Jacksonville is the reason the job was even open in the first place. Young Smart needs to understand that. Beating Florida early and often would be very good for his long-term job security.
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